You know, I’m not even mad when gibbering leftists and screeching, suspiciously pale “indigenous activists” scream and stamp their feet and burn the Australian flag. On the contrary, keep it up, I say. These clowns are doing more to make the “No” case for the upcoming “Indigenous Voice” referendum than most of us ever could.
The “Indigenous Voice” is Australia’s answer to the odious co-governance agenda the Labour government is foisting on New Zealand. For all its cuddly rhetoric, it clearly aims to establish a racially separatist constitution. Apartheid, not to put too fine a point on it.
It’s a colossally bad idea. So bad, that it’s uniting the most unlikely bedfellows.
Conservative Aboriginal leaders and Greens have held talks over their common opposition to a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament, as Anthony Albanese leans toward starving both the Yes and No campaigns of public funds.
Albanese’s gambit is clear: by refusing to publicly fund both campaigns, he can claim to be impartial. At the same time, though, he knows corporate funding will only flow to the “Yes” case — because spineless corporate wokesters will be too terrified of being called “racist” on Twitter.
The Australian understands there is an influential view within government that it will not fund either campaign.
This would significantly advantage the “yes” camp, which corporate Australia is lining up to bankroll.
Meanwhile, both the right and left of Aboriginal Australia are gearing up to oppose the Voice referendum, for entirely different reasons.
A diverse range of Indigenous leaders and politicians is coalescing against the voice, demanding the government halt the referendum, or at least ensure public funding for an Aboriginal-led No campaign.
The Australian can reveal Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine met Greens senator Lidia Thorpe […] who says a voice is not radical enough and a treaty between Indigenous Australians and the federal government is needed – was the first informal step to bringing conservatives and radicals in the Aboriginal community together to support a No campaign.
Mundine, along with Senator Jacinta Price, is opposed to the Voice for the “right” reasons: it’s divisive and will do nothing to solve the real problems that beset the worst-off Aboriginal Australians.
Thorpe, along with the likes of Tasmanian activist Michael Mansell, oppose it for diametrically opposite reasons.
Veteran Aboriginal leaders across the country, including Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman Michael Mansell and former North Queensland Yarrabah Aboriginal Shire mayor Percy Neal, are also rallying colleagues to help halt the referendum. Mr Mansell is campaigning for designated Indigenous senators from each state as an alternative to the voice, while others such as Mr Neal want to move immediately to a broader treaty.
Strange as it may seem, though, those more radical proposals deserve to be heard: not least because they make explicit what the proposal that is going to referendum tries to keep under wraps.
More importantly, both sides are correct that, in direct contrast to its high-falutin’ rhetoric, the “Voice” campaign is deliberately suppressing the voices of a great many Aboriginal Australians.
“People have to make an informed decision on constitutional change and you can’t have an informed opinion if you’re only getting one side of the story,” Mr Mansell said. “They’ve given nothing to the Aboriginal voice that says ‘Hang on, we’ve got a different viewpoint and we want to raise some issues’ […] most Aboriginal people are just completely shut out of this process. They don’t have the resources.”
This was backed by Mr Mundine. “I am sitting down and talking to people because we have got no money,” Mr Mundine said.
“We are up against a 50,000-tonne dragon. I think the general public will say ‘if they (Aboriginal people) are all split, why should we vote for it’. I predict the debate will get angrier as we get closer to this referendum because the voices of everyday working Aboriginal Australians have been totally snuffed out.”
The Australian
It’s a measure of how dangerously flawed the whole idea is, that it’s uniting people across the political spectrum — even if each opposes it for very different reasons. The “Voice” proponents “are better than Jesus Christ” said a source who was at the meeting. “They have brought all these people with different politics together.”
